Hi everyone,
I tried going for the CPTS some months ago, after completing the course and having done some boxes, I felt ready, on my first try, like apparently a lot of people I stayed stuck on the 8th flag. 2nd try though, it went really well and I managed to get to 11 flags in 5-6 days.
But then, I couldn't progress more, I stayed stuck at this point, I re read the course, I looked everywhere on every host I had control upon, the network shares, I didn't find credentials that could help me nor could I find exploits to get through.
On the last days I concentrated on the report and thought, at worst the review will help me pinpoint what I was missing, all I got was "You should read the course again" and it felt a lot like a "git gud m8". And so I ended up discovering a htb community here and thought that I couldn't hurt to try and talk with other people that may have attempted the CPTS and maybe got stuck at the same point I was. So, yeah, conv's open I guess!